Friday, August 12, 2016

Thirst and narrative

"Here at Fasayil, in the Jordan Valley, we
get water twice a week," explained our host, to the group of activists
from Tel Aviv. "Twice a week the water is flowing through this little
water pipe which you see here on the ground, a pipe with a 20 mm diameter. When
the large container is full we distribute the water among all the families, it has
to last for three days. And by the way, we are more fortunate compared to the Palestinian
communities more north. To them, Israel does not give any water at all, and
often the soldiers even confiscate the water which they buy for themselves. Thatis because the area where they live had been declared
as a firing range, and the army says they are living there illegally. So far,
they did not declare Fasayil a firing range. "

So what could we do about it – we, fifty
Israelis who had followed the call of “The Water Coalition" and came to Fasayil
on a Saturday afternoon? We could say a
few words of sympathy and encouragement, and express shame at the acts of the
country whose citizens we are. We could take down from our bus the 120 bottles
of mineral water which we brought with us as a completely inadequate gesture of
solidarity. (The tanker which we intended to bring got stuck on badly paved
roads, and came only the following day.) But at least a cardboard box full of
toys was immediately assaulted by the Fasayil children with cries of joy. We
could help build a simple playground from local materials and sit down with our
hosts for a modest meal. And to raise big signs “Open the tap! Water is a right”
towards the camera of the Social TV. And
then we got back on the bus and went back to our homes in Metropolitan Tel Aviv
where the water is always flowing in the taps. Always.

Two days later, there were other visitors
arriving at the village of Fasayil. In the morning, soldiers of the Israel
Defense Forces came to Fasayil, accompanied by bulldozers. Two residential
buildings were destroyed in less than half an hour. Twelve people, including
seven minors, were left homeless.

Was that in any way related to our visit? Probably
not. B'Tselem documents in recent weeks a sharp rise in the number of house
demolitions carried out by the army throughout the Occupied Territories. At the
Al-Moarjat community, also is the Jordan Valley, four residential buildings
were demolished, leaving homeless 14 people, including two children. And five
buildings were destroyed at the community of Umm al-Kheir in the South Hebron
Hills, in this case leaving 27 homeless people, including 16 minors. And so on
and so forth. Seven more Palestinian communities have gotten a destructive
visit from the army in the past week.

The day on which the soldiers and bulldozers came to the
village of Fasayil in the Jordan Valley was also the day when Sima Vaknin, Director
General of the Ministry for Strategic Affairs, attended an urgent session at
the Knesset in Jerusalem. She informed the Knesset Members of a severe
situation - "Israel is perceived in the world as a Pariah State". But
hope is not lost. The Ministry for Strategic Affairs has established an ten-member
inter-ministerial team, charged with formulating an alternative narrative, and Israel
will make every effort to get it accepted by the world. The ultimate goal is to
instill this alternate narrative globally during the next ten years, until
2025. "For me, victory means a narrative change in the world’s perception
of Israel. That the world will no longer
equate Israel with Apartheid" she noted.

How exactly is that to be achieved? Vaknin,
who until a few years ago served as the Chief Military Censor, refrained from
providing Knesset Members with any detailed information. "The fight
against the de-legitimization of Israel is a very sensitive topic. I'm pushing the
ministry to work in utmost secrecy, and I asked for the minister in charge, Gilad
Erdan, to refrain from public statements regarding the work of the ministry. We
want most of the work of the Strategic Affairs Ministry to be classified. There
are very many sensitivities. I can’t even explain in an open forum what these sensitivities
are... Much of what we do goes under the radar. I can explain in detail only at
a close session of the Foreign Affairs
and Defense Committee, with an absolute prohibition on publishing anything said
there. All I can say here is that the operating budget on the campaign against de-legitimization
of Israel comes to 128 million in 2016. "

Still, some of the methods to be used were exposed
two days later. Strategic Affairs Ministry officials held a work meeting with
their colleagues from the Interior Ministry and the Interior Security Ministry,
and informed them that "Dozens of international organizations are active
onthe West Bank, under various guises.
They are gathering information on IDF operations in the Territories. Foreign
activists then make use of this information to promote a boycott and isolation of
Israel. Boycott-supporting activists are agitating Palestinian residents of the
West Bank, inciting them against the IDF forces and disrupting military
operations.” It was estimated that
“there are several hundred such foreign activists, who enter either through Ben
Gurion Airport or via the Allenby Bridge, and pretend to be tourists. Some
activists are leaving after a short stay, but some remain in the West Bank for
long periods".

Therefore, Ministers Gilad Erdan and Aryeh Deri resolved to establish a joint team tasked with preventing such activists
getting through passport control and expelling those who already managed to enter
the country. Among other things, the team will collect intelligence on foreign
activists who are in the country in order to establish a judicial case justifying
their deportation. Also examined by the team’s legal advisers is the option of "criminalizing"
entire organizations, so as to be able to deport or deny access to anyone who
is a member with no need of gathering specific evidence against each activist
separately.

On the pages of "Israel Today" aka
the Bibinews, Itai Reuveni spelled outwho is meant: "For a long time, various agencies are sending to
Israel extremists disguised as tourists, in order that they will document ‘Human
Rights violations' [quotation marks in the original]. “The most blatant example is the Ecumenical Accompaniment
Program in Palestine and Israel, a project founded in 2002 by The World Council
of Churches. Its declared purpose is to bring volunteers to ‘experience life
under occupation and influence the International Community's involvement in the
conflict’. This project is sending activists from dozens of countries for a
period of three months, after a training in their home country which includes ways
of dealing with the military and briefing to get into Israel. When arriving,
they get a further briefing and then go into the field, wearing brown vests
with the program logo. They are deployed at the crossings and points of
friction, and even in the Old City of Jerusalem, and make one-sided documentation
of alleged Israeli violations. At a peak
moment activists positioned themselves at the Wailing Wall and documented the
security forces’ activities. At the end of three months, many activists return
to their home countries and promote various anti-Israeli campaigns at the explicit
request of the program managers. An end should be put at last to the activity
of this and other organizations of the same type such as the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM) and The American Friends Service Committee of the
Quakers, who until now got humanitarian visas."

This morning, the radio news reported that the
French Government condemns the demolition of buildings in Nabi Samwil, north of
Jerusalem, whose construction was financed by France. “It is the third time
this year that Israel is destroying or confiscating humanitarian aid structures
which were erected by France, including a school which was destroyed six months
ago. The increasing pace of demolition is in contravention of International
Law.”